Planing Maple Chipout

[Jim Lish]

I'm having problems with chip-out when planing big leaf maple. New knives on a Dewalt 733 planer doesn't help.
Any suggestions?

[David Helm]

Best choice is a spiral head planer. I have a spiral head joiner. I face join one side and bring the other side into parallel on my drum sander. Big leaf maple is my primary wood and the spiral head does a beautiful job on this highly figured wood. Where are you located. Grizzly is in Bellingham, Wa and carries shelix and spiral heads for many different planers.

[Phil Thien]

Take a sponge, soak it with water and wring most if it out. Now, wipe the side you're going to plane and wait until it looks like it is just beginning to dry.

Now run it through the planer.

Also, make sure you're running the board through the planer with the grain, so the knives aren't lifting the grain.

[Joe Thomas67]

Yea spiral cutter head will take care of it. Sometimes I will skew the board in the planer and that helps. Taking very light passes will help too.

[Loren Woirhaye]

Sponge trick may help, but if you really need to have the parts come out clean, back bevel the planer knives.

[Jim Lish]

The complex swirling figure on some of the big leaf maple seems to me to exacerbate the tear out problem. I was wondering if wetting it down a bit might help minimizing it and it seems worth a try. This is just a hobby for me so spiral head cutters and drum sanders are little beyond my reach. But quilted and birdseye maple have became some of my favorites to work with because of their natural beauty.

[Mel Fulks]

Just looked up that machine ,it is one with resharpenable knives. The mfgs. Routinely put the lowest grade knives in planers if you get M2 knives you will see a big improvement . That machine is discontinued ,spiral head would be big investment . FWW has fielded this question many times and we have too. FWW declined to print my letter about knives then shortly after printed an article saying "M2 is often used in planers" they have probably printed a hundred nutty answers to your question. This forum is not advertiser driven,that makes a difference. Please consider becoming a contributor.

[Loren Woirhaye]

Get Brian Burns's booklet "Double Bevel Sharpening". He developed the technique while running a business making a leather stripping tool with a maple body. You'll also need something like a Makita wet wheel grinder.

[Mel Fulks]

Back beveling probably does help ,but you will pay extra to get knives sharpened ,or you can buy a grinder ....and approach the problem tangentaly .

[David Hawkins]

Do you have enough clearance to run the wood in at an angle? Sometimes it will help if you can "cock" the piece enough to get some shear to the cut. On longer pieces you might need to "steer" the wood from one side of the planer to the other as it goes through. Shorter pieces just run through at an angle.

Sometimes it helps, sometimes not so much, but it's probably worth trying. Spiral heads are effective because they shear cut naturally. Setting up all the angle to the feed that you can can mimic that.

[Phil Thien]

The complex swirling figure on some of the big leaf maple seems to me to exacerbate the tear out problem. I was wondering if wetting it down a bit might help minimizing it and it seems worth a try. This is just a hobby for me so spiral head cutters and drum sanders are little beyond my reach. But quilted and birdseye maple have became some of my favorites to work with because of their natural beauty.

I'm sort of in the same boat as you, and space constrained as well. While I had heard of wetting difficult grain for years, my first chance to try it was with a piece of very figured walnut. The grain reversed every few inches in every direction, and was just a bear. Towards the end of the board a piece about the size of a quarter and about 1/4" deep tore right out.

I was very surprised how well the wetting worked. I got the best result by waiting for the wood to begin looking like it was drying out. While you'd think the water was evaporating, I think what is really happening is that the water is being absorbed into the wood. I only wait about 45 seconds after wetting the board before planning it.

When you're done planing, let the board dry and then hit it with a card scraper to clean-up any fuzzies left behind. And let us know how it works for you.

[Aleks Hunter]

Sharpen them and put a small back bevel. Watch this for a very functional sharpening jig you can make out of scraps. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIBKp9_hWLo Works like a dream.

[Jim Lish]

I tried planing the boards again after using a spray bottle and wiping the water off with a paper towel. After a minute or so of wetting, the planer did a better job and has the chip out spots shallow enough to eliminate by some heavy sanding. No apparent new chip out. I could try again but I think I will leave well enough alone. I will look into the back beveling if I have more problems. Thanks to all for your suggestions and advice.

[glenn bradley]

Excellent. Kudos to go Phil for tossing out the wetting suggestion.